


Never Coming Back

by kaigee



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Armin Arlert Dies, Character Death, Gen, M/M, Minor Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager, Sad Ending, levi saves erwin instead of armin, that's all it is, they'll never reach the sea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29018205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaigee/pseuds/kaigee
Summary: Mikasa doesn’t arrive in time, and Levi’s not feeling so sentimental.(Armin dies, basically)
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager
Comments: 6
Kudos: 90





	Never Coming Back

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first AOT fic!

* * *

It happens in a series of snapshots. A long line of images, preserved forever, but without any feelings attached.

Captain Levi, pacing up and down the roof, fingers drumming against his chin. Hange wiping her glasses on her sleeve, and then her sleeve against her forehead—beads of sweat glistening—but there’s no reaction, no sudden onslaught of vicious emotion. Certainly no anger, as he expects there to be.

He looks, and— _click,_ goes the camera shutter, before he can stop it. Armin, lying there, his skin sloughing off his bones, pooling on the tiles—the color of ash left over from a fire, of blood smeared across your clothes. _Already dead, surely,_ but his chest shudders, like a reanimated corpse, and he heaves a ghostly inhale through his charred lips, and he exhales faintly—he breathes.

 _Click._ Levi is pacing, wandering, looking down at him, and then at Erwin. He turns the box of serum in his hands. _Click._ Hange’s expression is grim.

“You can’t,” Eren says. The words are torn from him—they must be. There’s no way, that if he actually tried to, he could speak. But Levi turns to him upon hearing, and the expression on his face says it all, better than any words, in any language, ever could.

Eren’s stomach drops. He thought he couldn’t feel, but suddenly he does. He feels like if it comes down to it, he’ll kill Levi, and Hange, and any poor bastard who tries to get in his way, if it means he can save Armin.

Terror sets in, as good a motivator as any, and Eren lunges for Levi, shouting at the top of his lungs:

“You can’t, I won’t let you! There’s no way in hell! I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll fucking kill you—”

They fall to the ground in a heap. Eren catches his breath, and punches Levi square in the face. He tries to do it again, but the bastard blocks him, and traps his wrist.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Eren doesn’t realize his mistake until it’s too late—he whips his head around to see Hange with the needle poised above Erwin’s arm.

“No!” he cries, throwing himself towards her, but there it goes. Too late. The liquid drains from the needle, and Eren covers his mouth with his hands.

 _No, no, no…_ he thinks, looking at Armin, _click, click, click._ God, where was Mikasa? Why didn’t she come to help him? Maybe they could have stopped it, then, maybe they could have convinced Levi, maybe they could have done something, but now—now— 

For a terrible eternity, Eren watches Armin’s feeble chest rise and fall. Then he whirls around and aims a kick straight for Levi’s stomach.

He’s ready for him, he steps out of the way, but Eren charges at him at full speed, throwing all his weight his way, because if he can push him off the roof, then he’ll probably die, or at least break a few bones, and that means he’ll _suffer._

Eren doesn’t know what else to do but look for revenge. 

He doesn’t feel. Not even anger, not really. His head is empty of thoughts, as if he’s running on instinct. But he does scream as he runs, feet pounding on hollow tiles, heart throbbing in his throat, heart snapping to pieces somewhere in his aching chest.

Levi throws out his hands, “Eren, stop—” 

Upon impact he wraps his arms tight around Levi and lets momentum propel them over the edge. Then his stomach drops, again, as they start to plummet, wind rushing past his ears. Somewhere behind them, he hears the thunderous sound that must be Erwin turning into a titan. 

Something slows their fall. When Eren eventually crashes to the ground, he looks up and sees Levi already standing above him. He must have caught himself. Eren’s eyelids are heavy, so he turns his face into the pavement.

“You useless fool!” Levi—it must be Levi—cries. Harsh hands lift him to his feet and he’s being shaken, round and round and up and back and his teeth rattle. Levi knees him in the stomach a few times for good measure but he doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel—

Levi throws him to the ground and kicks him to the stomach. Then he kneels beside him and grabs his chin. “Idiot. What’s done is done. If you want to be with Armin in his final moments, then you best climb back up that roof. And count yourself lucky I haven’t knocked you unconscious with the butt of my blade.”

 _Wouldn’t be so bad,_ Eren thinks. He still doesn’t feel anything—what is wrong with him? He doesn’t want to see Armin. He’d rather lie here forever and just look up at the sky. It’s a pale, crystal blue, like Armin’s eyes. Eren can’t think of anything else in the world that matches that shade.

Are Armin’s eyes burned shut?

Eren’s breath catches. He fumbles for Levi’s shirt sleeve, to clutch it, and cling to it, but he’s already turning to walk away. “No…” Eren groans, scrubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands because hopefully that will make the clouds stop spinning. “No, this isn’t… this isn’t real, this isn’t happening. Wake up. Wake up!” Nothing happens. He doesn’t wake up. 

His stomach drops.

Eren goes quickly to the roof and runs to Armin’s side, dropping to his knees. He looks down at his own palms to avoid securing every inch of Armin’s burned body into his memory, but eventually he can’t help glancing at his face— 

_—click—_

—or what’s left of it.

“Armin,” he says, shaking his head. Levi and Hange must still be around somewhere, and Erwin’s titan too, but he doesn’t care about any of them. He’s feeling now, too much, threatening to drown him. Emotions he can’t name. He cradles Armin’s face, hoping his body won’t turn to dust in his hands. 

“Mikasa’s not here,” he starts. “She… I don’t know where she is. I’m so sorry she’s not here. I’m so sorry, Armin.” He can’t talk then, after that, because he’s crying too much, and he tries to stop but the tears just keep coming—stupid tears. He hates his body, how it keeps him from getting out what he needs to say. 

He can’t even believe that this is truly happening, but somewhere in the back of his mind he knows it is, and that this is his one last chance to talk to Armin. And though his emotions are overwhelming him, somehow there’s enough space left to understand the importance of getting it all out, because it’s his last chance.

“I don’t—even know how this happened,” he says, shakily, his tongue feeling like a foreign plank of wood in his mouth. “One minute, we were—and you—sacrificed yourself, didn’t you? It was a good plan, Armin, it worked so well. If I hadn’t been so impulsive I could have used that to convince them. You always come up with amazing plans. You’re so smart, you’re like a genius. And brave, too, braver than I could ever be. I…”

He pauses, rubbing his thumb over Armin’s cheek. While he was praising Armin, he almost forgot the situation. He felt like he could have kept praising him forever. 

Eren swallows. “I don’t know how much time we have. I love you, Armin. I love you so much, in every kind of way, and it’s my fault you’re dying, but maybe we can still save you if you hold on until you can get treated. Please, Armin, try to hang on, I don’t know what I’d do without you—”

He realizes, suddenly, that Armin’s chest isn’t moving. He waits, and Armin doesn’t breathe, no matter how many seconds pass.

He feels— 

And feels, terror and pain and panic building up inside him, like a monster waking up. He springs to his feet and backs away, raising his hand to his lips, heart hammering against his brittle ribs. A heavy, pulsating rhythm courses through him, thunderous and consuming, like crashing waves.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do. But Armin has been dead for a while. Eren never checked his pulse—he probably didn’t hear anything he said.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably write more AOT but this was just a quick one that I wrote in about an hour... not really edited either but I wanted to get it posted as fast as possible. I'm pretty late to the fandom and just got caught up, but basically I ship eren/armin a lot and am planning on writing more of that.


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